Andy Ortmann — Inconsequential
In full disclosure, I'm not a big fan of synthesizer goofballery. Letting modulars go and bleep and wonk in long loops does nothing for me. However, for the most part, Inconsequential didn't strike me as boring and pretentious. Maybe it's the subtle bits of concrete that keep it grounded. Maybe it was that it worked well in the background while I worked. Maybe it was both. Whatever the reason, there was something about Andy's latest that didn't react with me the way other music of this type does. Other than "The Auger," the restraint shown on the synthesizer adds to the strength of the concrete that makes up a big part of the album. This is very evident on "The Way." For this, Andy recorded a sculpture at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO. Slow, deliberate concrete juxtaposes itself nicely against the opening synth salvo of the first track. Side A ends with an interesting, and genuinely unsettling number. Sparse synth noodling plays host to a combination of normal and altered female spoken word. The alteration makes it feel like something you'd hear in the Red Room in Twin Peaks. What sounds like a loop of a can being crushed alongside the shotgun in Doom reloading is a different start to Side B. This should be a sign of what's to come: the inevitable modular wankery. What started off as promising go too important for itself and went full on indulgent. "The Auger IX-X" captures what I despise about overlong, goofy synth wanking, and it's a sad end to an otherwise pretty decent tape.
Anyone familiar with Andy will know what to expect and enjoy it (that is, if you like what he's doing). The synthesizers work well with the musique concrete and play out with peaks and valleys the help to accentuate each other. If it weren't for my bitter hatred of self important synth wankery, I would have liked this album a real lot.